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Cancer Resources > Cancer News > 2004 > December
New leukemia drugs more effective, studies show
Last Updated: 2004-12-06 13:56:13 -0400 (Reuters Health)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Next-generation leukemia drugs, designed to help patients who do not respond to Gleevec, appear to be more effective than researchers expected, according to presentations at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology in San Diego.
In one phase I trial financed by Bristol-Myers, 31 of 36 patients with advanced chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), who had not been helped by Gleevec, had a complete hematologic response to BMS-354825.
This translates to an 86% remission rate, said Dr. Charles Sawyers, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of California Los Angeles, who is helping test the drug.
"Certainly it is wonderful. It will save lives," added Dr. Alan Kinniburgh, senior vice president of research for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
Oncologists hope the approach may work in many other cancers, too.
Dr. Kinniburgh said it is likely that the drugs will be used in combination. "I know of no cancer where one single drug has ever cured the cancer," he said.
While Gleevec (Novartis) targets the BCR-ABL enzyme, BMS-354825 affects a different enzyme called SRC.
Dr. Sawyers said he and colleagues worried that there could be unforeseen side effects in patients, because no one had ever tested a SRC inhibitor in humans. But so far it seems safe, he said.
Meanwhile, Novartis also designed its own new compound, AMN107, dubbed "super Gleevec," to overcome the weaknesses in Gleevec. It is in phase I trials in 76 patients with advanced leukemia and has shown a strong response in half of them, said Dr. Francis Giles of the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
"The response rates were dramatic," Dr. Giles said in a telephone interview after presenting his findings. Dr. Giles and colleagues started patients on very low doses of AMN107, but he believes higher doses will show even better responses.
AMN107 is up to 30 times more potent than Gleevec because it was designed to more efficiently bind to the BCR-ABL enzyme, Dr. Giles said. "Clearly, we have a decent shot at a cure," he said.
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